Chris Rickleton

UPDATE, March 28: American journalist Umar Farooq says he has been freed and is leaving Kyrgyzstan. Meanwhile, lawyers for human rights watchdog Bir Duino have filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office for the raids on their office and several top employees’ homes.

The arrest of an American journalist on extremism charges and the subsequent raid of a prominent human rights organization, both in southern Kyrgyzstan’s largest city, Osh, suggest that Kyrgyz authorities are still cagey about independent inquiry in a region associated with growing adherence to Islam and festering inter-ethnic tensions.

Kyrgyzstan has styled itself as a bastion of democracy in an authoritarian region, but rights activists see looming Russian-style legislation that would brand NGOs “foreign agents” as impending death for the country’s once-vibrant civil society.

Umar Farooq was researching the recent arrest of a popular cleric accused of supporting Syrian radicals, said a local journalist who had met with him shortly after he arrived in Kyrgyzstan a few weeks ago. On his webpage, Farooq identifies himself as a journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor and others.

The State Committee for National Security (GKNB) released a statement late March 27 confirming Farooq’s March 25 arrest, and claiming he had been found with documents and video materials of a "religious extremist and terrorist character."

A US Embassy spokeswoman told EurasiaNet.org that American officials had been in touch with Farooq and were providing consular support.

The hated younger son of Kyrgyzstan’s former president is living the highlife in the United Kingdom, inhabiting a house bought by an opaque shell company – probably with money stolen from the Kyrgyz people – while he waits for asylum. So alleges transparency watchdog Global Witness in a March 25 report.

Maxim Bakiyev never returned to Kyrgyzstan after his father, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was ousted in a bloody April 2010 uprising that left around 100 people dead. He has since been found guilty at home of stealing millions in government funds and attempted murder, charges he says are politically motivated.

Meanwhile, he has applied for asylum in the UK and is eligible for permanent residency in three months, according to Global Witness.

How Maxim came to live in a $5.2-million mansion, bought by a secret Belize-registered company just after his father’s regime imploded, is the focus on the Global Witness report.

The report provides strong evidence suggesting that the scion of the Bakiyev clan, if not fully identifiable as the owner of the house in a posh London suburb, at least inhabits it.

Kyrgyzstan’s obscurity has allowed Maxim to fly under the radar of the British press for the most part. Even the British football club he was rumored to have a stake in was fairly unfashionable.

Reports that Russia is uncomfortable with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) stepping into banking are nothing new. In particular, Moscow’s quiet efforts to block the creation of an SCO development bank that would funnel largely Chinese credit into Russia’s backyard have featured at the organization’s meetings in recent years.

But a thought-provoking analysis by Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Center, published last week by Russia in Global Affairs, suggests the Kremlin is mistaken, placing fears about appearing to be a junior partner over a sound geopolitical strategy that could give it a measure of control over China’s Central Asia policy.

The SCO – which groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – has tried hard to convince the world it is more than just a club for dictators. China’s push to include economic initiatives on the SCO agenda was a part of this process, Gabuev notes, and a development bank has been on the table at SCO powwows since 2009.

Vyacheslav Miroshkin’s childhood in Kyrgyzstan three decades ago was characterized by long, cold winters. “You could pour a few buckets of water on the ground and you would have an ice rink for the whole season. In recent times we have not had many like that,” said Miroshkin, head of Heli-Ski on Tien Shan, a mountain sports company based in Bishkek.

Hours before heroically coaxing Vladimir Putin out of his mysterious 11-day hibernation on March 16, Kyrgyzstan's President Almazbek made a brief stopover in Moldova.

He was flying on a private jet, reportedly provided by one of Moldova’s richest men.

The secretive mission to Chisinau, where Atambayev reportedly met controversial oligarch-politician Vladimir Plahotniuc, has baffled many in Bishkek and angered opposition leaders.

Plahotniuc, aside from being a parliamentarian from the pro-Europe Democratic Party of Moldova, has faced legal scandals related to his business activity in both Great Britain and the Netherlands. In 2012, Business New Europe called the oligarch “a kingmaker.” Others describe him as the most powerful man in Moldova.

Prompting even more questions, Atambayev did not meet Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti during the four-hour layover. Timofti’s press secretary said to local media, as a way of explanation, that Atambayev was short on time and that he “met with someone in Chisinau.”

Atambayev’s office is mostly tight-lipped about the meeting, prompting a furious reaction from opposition leader Ravshan Jeenbekov, who said such behavior – flying on a private jet and holding secret meetings – “does not honor the head of an independent state.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tried to end uncertainty about Iran’s desire for Turkmenistan's gas during his first official visit to the gas-rich Central Asian country on March 11, promising an unspecified increase in imports.

Over the last few years, at least in terms of gas, Turkmenistan’s relationship with Iran has been second only to its relationship with Russia in volatility. Tehran makes occasional noises about boosting domestic production and doing away with a tiresome trade pickled with disputes.

But during his visit Rouhani confirmed that the Islamic Republic would up imports from Turkmenistan.

That must be music to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s ears. The Turkmen economy has been struggling on the back of the sharp downturn in Russia and the slumping ruble; moreover, Moscow suddenly slashed imports of Turkmen gas last month.

Referring to increased transport links with Turkmenistan, such as the new Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway, Rouhani set an ambitious target for bilateral trade to grow by more than 15 times from its current $3.7 billion to $60 billion by 2020, his official president.ir website cited him as saying.

For his part, Berdymukhamedov was also effusive: “In recent years, given the growing cooperation in different fields, bilateral ties between Tehran and Ashgabat have taken on a new meaning,” said the Turkmen president, who also called Rouhani a “brother” in comments picked up by AFP.

In his office, Ozbek Azhi Chotonov, head of the Bishkek-based Islamic think tank Source of the Truth, plays a news clip about the hospitalization of a young girl in neighboring Kazakhstan after a bad reaction to a vaccine. For him, the report constitutes Exhibit A as to why vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they are designed to prevent.

A lone gunman shot and killed one of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon’s most aggressive critics on March 5. Some observers have drawn parallels between the murder of Umarali Quvvatov and the late February assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

You can find donkeys at Bishkek’s theme parks painted to look like zebras. A Kyrgyz proverb has it that travelling on one to the jailoo, or mountain pasture, is a sign of social lowliness.

In a country that reveres – and eats – the horse, the humble donkey is a poor substitute, destined to spend its days poked and prodded by rural boys dreaming of stallions.

For this reason, allegations that a farm outside Bishkek is doing a spritely trade flogging donkey meat to eateries in Kyrgyzstan’s capital have caused mass consternation and soul searching. The parliament’s committee on agrarian policy threatened on March 2 that the government had until March 15 to deliver justice for Kyrgyz meat lovers, or face a vote of no confidence.

Investigators promptly opened a criminal case against the farm, which denies wrongdoing, on March 3.

The scandal began brewing on February 24 when journalists from state television followed up on the complaints of locals and visited a farm in Sololuk District, not far from Bishkek. Gruesome photos soon emerged online of piles of severed donkey heads and other donkey parts at the farm’s less-than-sterile-appearing slaughterhouse.

Selling donkey meat is not a crime in Kyrgyzstan, but the journalists claimed – without offering proof – that the animals were bound for Bishkek’s restaurants, where their cuts would masquerade as beef and lamb.

The death of a Kyrgyz mobster in the Belarusian capital appears to have ignited another round of mudslinging between two erstwhile Soviet republics. Kyrgyzstan is still furious that, for five years, Belarus has sheltered the country’s ex-dictator and his family.

The diplomatic row flared February 27, a day after Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev released an incendiary statement accusing ex-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s brother Janysh of organizing the killing of 41-year-old Almanbet Anapiyaev last week in Minsk.

Atambayev, who has said he wanted to be a writer as a child, accused the Bakiyevs of being “cannibals” and poured scorn on Belarus and President Alexander Lukashenko for having “sheltered” the “beasts” since a bloody revolution in April 2010 forced the Bakiyev clan from power.

“The people remember how these beasts burned people alive, how they maimed and killed journalists, how they broke the arms and legs of businessmen, how they cut the ears and noses off their victims,” Atambayev’s statement reads.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s response to Atambayev drips with contempt.

It makes no sense to comment on the parallels and offensive statements made against Belarus by the Kyrgyz leadership. Such overheated emotional statements would not be possible at the level of the leader of a civilized state.